What are women's sexual fantasies in 2013?

To mark the 40th anniversary of My Secret Garden, the seminal book which
revealed women's sexual fantasies (long before Fifty Shades of Grey), Emily
Dubberley is discovering what women dream about today. She talks to Dr
Brooke Magnanti about her findings.

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Emily Dubberley is researching what women really want in the bedroom for her new book, Garden of Desires - to mark the 40th anniversary of the seminal 'My Secret Garden'.

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Compiled by Nancy Friday, The Secret Garden was a collection of interviews about women's fantasies which transformed the way a generation saw self-love and erotic imagination.

As recently as the 1970s, the idea that women had sexual fantasies was still hotly debated, with then editor of Cosmopolitan Helen Gurley Brown opining that fantasising was strictly for the boys. One book changed all that: no, not Fifty Shades, but My Secret Garden, first published in 1973.

Compiled by Nancy Friday, this collection of interviews about women's fantasies transformed the way a generation saw self-love and erotic imagination. For Emily Dubberley the upcoming 40th anniversary of the classic book was an unmissable chance to revisit a phenomenon that changed the way many people viewed women's sexuality.

I asked her about the project: after all haven't we had about all the sex we can stand recently, what with EL James last year? Apparently not. "I wanted to bring attention to female fantasy and remind women that the idea that women have a private sexuality is a recent sexual freedom - and not something to be taken for granted or brushed under the carpet,” Dubberley explains.

“Nancy Friday did far more than write a book: she helped open up a whole new area of discussion about female solo sexuality."

Some of the appeal of reading about other people's fantasies - apart, obviously, from enjoying the content - is helping to put our own secret imaginings into context. "In the 12 years that I've worked as a sex writer, 'Am I normal?' is one of the most common questions people have written in with," says Dubberley.

"The desire to fit in runs deeply in many people. Nancy Friday helped show there is no 'normal' - and that diversity is something to be celebrated or at least accepted."

With more and more people talking about 'porn for women' and 'feminist porn' - not to mention that almost anything can be found on the internet these days - is it still relevant? Surely everything is out there now? "The more esoteric fantasies can get lost, replaced by common more accepted themes such as submission, domination and exhibitionism. This in turn may make women with esoteric fantasies feel less 'normal'," says Dubberley.

With more and more on show, it might even ironically become harder to admit to, and embrace, a private and individual sexual life.

That said, the content of the replies she has had so far have shown some new trends emerging. "There are differences - animal fantasies are far rarer, in my experience, than My Secret Garden would suggest and, from the 200 or so fantasies that have so far been submitted to my book, Garden of Desires, gender fluidity fantasies are far more common than they were in 1974. However, there is a great deal of overlap between the fantasies of Friday's contributors in 1973 and mine in 2013."